I am completely baffled as to why I like this show. I never watched a minute of it when it was on, but since I discovered it a few weeks ago, not only do I appear to be carefully Tivoing every episode, but saving them up to make little mini-marathons for myself during chunks of time when I am relatively certain that I will be alone and uninterrupted.
It is a veritable chowder of a show, lousy and lumpchunky with cheese and corn, but I cannot bear to miss a single episode.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of my unexpected enjoyment of this pretty standard 90s TV offering is how much I identify with the Gilmore Girls. Not the kid, of course, and not really the mother, although she does enjoy making a wisecrack or two now and then, but it is the crotchety, imperious, insufferable old ***** of a grandmother with whom I have, to my horrified amazement, the most affinity.
Emily Gilmore knows what she wants, she knows what she likes, and she knows who she is, and so do I.
And when a situation involves other people, places or things that dare to diverge from the first two, in clear and utter disregard of the third, Emily is not one to stand on the ceremonies of reticence. And neither am I. Though I do try to be as polite about it as one can under such circumstances. Emily, not so much.
For the benefit of the two elderly lurkers in Mogadishu who join me in being the only people on earth who did not watch this show ten years ago, the premise is this:
Lorelai Gilmore, the witty but only very slightly unconventional only child of parents so conventional that her father is played by the same actor whose starred in the most famous made-for-TV movie about Franklin Roosevelt, gets pregant in high school, and decides to raise the baby herself, which she does, and when we meet them all, she is pretty much done with that, as the baby is now a teenager and in high school herself.
Rory, the erstwhile baby, enjoys very close if very different relationships with both her mother and her grandmother (hence the name of the show) who each believes herself to be much more different from each other than they really are.
While Emily may prefer a more overtly old-fashioned and traditional lifestyle, Lorelai's ostensible rejection of tradition is wafer-thin, confined to things like the occasional comical household accent piece, and while Rory dutifully plays along with her mother's charade, she is, even at sixteen, clearly headed more toward Emily's side of the chart.
So it is beyond unclear why I would find any of them remotely likeable or interesting characters, since about the only thing I really have in common with Emily (aside from what I consider to be just a healthy amount of basic arrogance) is a partiality for a well-appointed dinner table. Maybe it is an inversion-based attraction. If Lorelai's contempt for tradition is confined to superficialities, I guess you could say the same thing about my predeliction for it. I do love me some fine textiles and bone china.
It is probably most accurate to say that the show relaxes me, kind of like the way Ina Garten does.
Lorelai's little quips, her bantering with Rory, are funny in the same sort of comforting way the Three Stooges are funny, and the way the show adheres to all the standard sitcom conventions has a calming effect somehow. There are no surprises, no onion-like layers of character depth to be plumbed, everyone is consistently and satisfyingly exactly as their one-dimensional true-to-genre sitcom self is supposed to be.
The younger, single Gilmore girls have a full contingent each of the expected wacky friends, engage in all the expected romantic hijinks, all of whom and which Emily variously approves, disapproves, or knows nothing about.
The acting is, at worst, slightly a cut above the average sitcom level, the casting is excellent, and the pace is fast enough to engage me, which is saying a lot.
I highly recommend this show to that afore-mentioned pair of Mogadishu elders, my fellow Ina Garten fans, and anybody else who seeks an amusing, entertaining, and bewilderingly soothing televiewing experience.
It is a veritable chowder of a show, lousy and lumpchunky with cheese and corn, but I cannot bear to miss a single episode.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of my unexpected enjoyment of this pretty standard 90s TV offering is how much I identify with the Gilmore Girls. Not the kid, of course, and not really the mother, although she does enjoy making a wisecrack or two now and then, but it is the crotchety, imperious, insufferable old ***** of a grandmother with whom I have, to my horrified amazement, the most affinity.
Emily Gilmore knows what she wants, she knows what she likes, and she knows who she is, and so do I.
And when a situation involves other people, places or things that dare to diverge from the first two, in clear and utter disregard of the third, Emily is not one to stand on the ceremonies of reticence. And neither am I. Though I do try to be as polite about it as one can under such circumstances. Emily, not so much.
For the benefit of the two elderly lurkers in Mogadishu who join me in being the only people on earth who did not watch this show ten years ago, the premise is this:
Lorelai Gilmore, the witty but only very slightly unconventional only child of parents so conventional that her father is played by the same actor whose starred in the most famous made-for-TV movie about Franklin Roosevelt, gets pregant in high school, and decides to raise the baby herself, which she does, and when we meet them all, she is pretty much done with that, as the baby is now a teenager and in high school herself.
Rory, the erstwhile baby, enjoys very close if very different relationships with both her mother and her grandmother (hence the name of the show) who each believes herself to be much more different from each other than they really are.
While Emily may prefer a more overtly old-fashioned and traditional lifestyle, Lorelai's ostensible rejection of tradition is wafer-thin, confined to things like the occasional comical household accent piece, and while Rory dutifully plays along with her mother's charade, she is, even at sixteen, clearly headed more toward Emily's side of the chart.
So it is beyond unclear why I would find any of them remotely likeable or interesting characters, since about the only thing I really have in common with Emily (aside from what I consider to be just a healthy amount of basic arrogance) is a partiality for a well-appointed dinner table. Maybe it is an inversion-based attraction. If Lorelai's contempt for tradition is confined to superficialities, I guess you could say the same thing about my predeliction for it. I do love me some fine textiles and bone china.
It is probably most accurate to say that the show relaxes me, kind of like the way Ina Garten does.
Lorelai's little quips, her bantering with Rory, are funny in the same sort of comforting way the Three Stooges are funny, and the way the show adheres to all the standard sitcom conventions has a calming effect somehow. There are no surprises, no onion-like layers of character depth to be plumbed, everyone is consistently and satisfyingly exactly as their one-dimensional true-to-genre sitcom self is supposed to be.
The younger, single Gilmore girls have a full contingent each of the expected wacky friends, engage in all the expected romantic hijinks, all of whom and which Emily variously approves, disapproves, or knows nothing about.
The acting is, at worst, slightly a cut above the average sitcom level, the casting is excellent, and the pace is fast enough to engage me, which is saying a lot.
I highly recommend this show to that afore-mentioned pair of Mogadishu elders, my fellow Ina Garten fans, and anybody else who seeks an amusing, entertaining, and bewilderingly soothing televiewing experience.
I think it looks cute and was planning to buy it..